MAiD Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

The British state is happy to kill you

In my late twenties, I became clinically depressed and prone to bouts of suicidal ideation — “suicidal”, in un-medical English. From 1993 to 1998 I lived in northern Italy; paradise, apparently, but to me it felt more like a J.G. Ballard novel.

Everyone was partnered, successful and “shiny”. I — an Iris Murdoch-obsessed homosexual statistician — lay on the lakeside beach, dully hungry from the latest pointless attempt to lose weight, surrounded by the mountains about whose majesty everyone insisted. I saw nothing but rocks. No bildungsroman lurked, waiting to be written: just pointlessness mixed with failure.

Our political class has just sanctioned death for the ‘worthless’.

For me, the grimmest thing about today’s ‘assisted dying’ debate in the House of Commons was when MPs emitted an audible groan upon hearing about Canada’s state-sanctioned killing of the wretched. It was the Conservative MP Danny Kruger who had the temerity to mention these unfortunates put to death by their own government. He referred to ‘medics’ in Canada, who are ‘specialists in assisted death’, who ‘personally kill hundreds of patients a year’. A collective whine shook the chamber as MPs were confronted with the truth of what they were voting for: the right of state-approved bodies to slay certain members of the public. ‘If honourable members have a difficulty with the language’, Kruger shot back, ‘then I wonder what they’re doing here’.

h/t XC

A new poll has found that most Canadians fear the nation’s euthanasia regime unfairly targets those who are financially and socially vulnerable but still support the practice in general.

The poll, conducted by Angus Reid and released on November 21, showed that roughly three-in-five respondents, or 62 percent, “worry financially or socially vulnerable people will consider MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) because they lack adequate care.”

Worryingly, the poll also found that 63 percent of respondents were fine with Canada’s current euthanasia laws.

Esther Rantzen says she doesn’t have the strength to fly to Canada to seek lasting relief from her ever-advancing cancer, but she would if she could.

“I love Canada, but I think I will go to Switzerland and seek an assisted death if the illness starts to progress faster,” Rantzen, 84, said from her cottage in the New Forest in southern England.

“It was named the New Forest a thousand years ago by one of William the Conqueror’s sons. So we are quite a conservative country…. If we regard a thousand years as being quite new, you can see why it’s taking us a bit of time to reform our current law.”

Jamie Hale has been in and out of the hospital for more than half his life. The 33-year-old Brit needs a wheelchair and relies on partial ventilation and round-the-clock care. Several years ago, he was critically ill and hospitalized for six months “as a direct result of not having had that care,” he told me from the back of a car on his way to a weekly visit at a National Health Service clinic in London. “I’d be dead without the NHS,” he concludes.

Even so, Hale—who has a master’s degree in philosophy, politics, and the economics of health—often thinks about how much his life costs the state. “I’m very aware I’m not cost-effective,” he added. “It’s very hard not to be aware you are the kind of financial burden the system is creaking under.”

I bet this is happening behind the scenes at Canadian hospitals and in government. @fancypants_s https://t.co/rVqRWmdD7z

— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) November 27, 2024

h/t Patti Jo

Each Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) practitioner is meant to follow the criminal law. Yet Dirk Huyer, Ontario’s chief coroner, at first publicly, and then for years privately, warned that there is a “pattern of noncompliance” by physicians and nurses with the criminal law on MAID. More than 428 flagged cases later, as I wrote in a recent investigative report for The New Atlantis, no one is listening.

The Doctor Who Helped Me Understand My Mom’s Choice to Die

Earlier this year, my mother ended her life via medical aid in dying, also known as MAID. She had A.L.S., so she was suffering in many ways, and her choice to die in this manner felt right. Probably because it felt that way, in the time leading up to her death I didn’t have many unanswered questions about MAID. I knew it was legal nationwide in Canada, where I’m from and where my mom lived. (There it’s called medical assistance in dying, and unlike in the United States, patients can apply for it when their disease is nonterminal, as long as they have a “grievous and irremediable medical condition.”) I was also aware that in the United States MAID was legal in only 10 states and the District of Columbia. That’s pretty much what I knew, and that was enough.

Ontario’s euthanasia regulators have tracked 428 cases of possible criminal violations — and not referred a single case to law enforcement, say leaked documents.

For years, there have been clear signals that euthanasia providers in Canada may be breaking the law and getting away with it. That is the finding of the officials who are responsible for monitoring euthanasia deaths to ensure compliance in the province of Ontario. Newly uncovered reports reveal that these authorities have thus far counted over 400 apparent violations — and have kept this information from the public and not pursued a single criminal charge, even against repeat violators and “blatant” offenders.

h/t DB

The president of Sarco’s operator The Last Resort, Dr Florian Willet, remains in custody after being arrested along with several other people nearby. Willet was the only person present when the woman died.

The inventor of the Sarco, Philip Nitschke, followed the process by video call but was unable to catch all of it due to technical difficulties.

This, from a report issued by the Ontario chief coroner’s office on how medical assistance in dying (MAID) is being carried out in this province:

Mr. A, “a male in his 40s,” was suffering from inflammatory bowel disease. He also had “a history of mental illness, previous episodes of suicidality, and ongoing alcohol and opioid misuse.” No one offered him treatment for his addictions, but a psychiatrist gave him information about MAID. He was approved for death under what’s known as “Track 2” — cases where death is not reasonably foreseeable. A MAID provider personally drove him to the place where he was given an assisted death.

“If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill ‘unproductive’ fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail!… it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other ‘unproductive’ people.” ~ Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen

An American woman who is believed to be the first person to die inside a controversial “suicide pod” in a Swiss forest was found with marks around her neck resembling strangulation injuries, according to a prosecutor’s statement.

The woman, then 64, allegedly traveled to Switzerland with the intention of using the so-called Sarco pod, a capsule that replaces oxygen inside the pod with nitrogen to induce death by hypoxia.

Scheme originally intended for terminally ill has been expanded, with one patient offered it for hearing loss, leaked call reveals

Assisted dying is being abused in Canada with doctors coercing patients into ending their lives, members of the group who helped to legalise it have admitted.

Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) was introduced for the terminally ill in Canada in 2016 after a campaign group took a case to the country’s supreme court.

Assisted dying has since been rapidly expanded, with disabled people given access in 2021 and those with mental health conditions set to join them by 2027.